The advent of mobile telephones and the development of wireless communications have opened new possibilities and new perspectives for the customers who are given higher communication speed, new services and a wide number of wireless communications networks becoming available on a given territory, e.g., Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.
In order to take advantage of such wide possibilities of wireless communication, more recent mobile phones are now equipped with two Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs), corresponding to two distinctive telephone numbers offering communications with two distinct communication networks (e.g., Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN).
With such a dual SIM arrangement, the mobile equipment, be it a laptop, a conventional phone or a more sophisticated smartphone, receives the capacity to select one particular wireless communication network in accordance with the User's wish.
US 2010/0027534 entitled “Methods for handling Packet-Switched Data Transmissions by Mobile Station with Subscriber Identity Cards and Systems utilizing the same” discloses the use of two SIM cards and the switching balancing of the Uplink a data stream in the uplink method allowing the switching of an uplink IP packet between two Public Land Mobile Network.
Thanks to such known technique, a user equipment (UE) is given the possibility to switch an uplink data stream between two distinctive network operators and thus e.g., take advantage of the one offering the higher speed and Quality of Service (QoS).
This is already a first attractive use of two distinctive SIM cards, since a User Equipment, which transmits data to a base station belonging to a first network operator, is given the control to switch to a second network operator without loss of data in the uplink.
There is a desire to expand the use of two existing SIM cards to other situations, particularly the Downlink which raises additional problems since, contrary to the uplink, the party (User Equipment) taking the initiative of the switching process is NOT transmitting data but receives data from a base station.
Therefore, there is a need for methods and arrangements for handling downlink transmission during a network switch.